XVIII
IN WHICH WE HEAR NEWS FROM THE SOUTH
As near as might be guessed, it wanted yet an hour or two of daybreakwhen we made a landing within the boundaries of Appleby Hundred, andbeached and hid the pirogue in the bushes.
Of the down-stream flitting through the small hours of the warmmidsummer night there is no sharp-etched picture on the memory page. AsI recall it, no spoken word of Jennifer's or mine came in to break therhythm of the hasting voyage. Our paddles rose and fell, dipping andsweeping in unison as if we two, kneeling in bow and stern, wereseparate halves of some relentless mechanism driven by a single impulse.Overhead the starlit dome circled solemnly to the right or left to matchthe windings of the stream. On each hand the tree-fringed shores spedbackward in the gloom; and beneath the light shell of poplar wood thatbarely kissed the ripples in passing, the river lapped and gurgled,chuckling weirdly at the paddle plungings, and swirling aft in thelonger reaches to point at us down the lengthening wake with a waveringfinger silver-tipped in the wan starlight.
With the canoe safely hidden at the landing place, which was somelittle distance from that oak grove where I had twice kept tryst withdeath, we set out for the manor house, skulking Indian fashion throughthe wood; and, when we reached the in-fields, looking momently to comeupon a sentry.
Thinking the approaches from the road and river would be better guardedthan that from the wood, we skirted a widespread thicket tangle, sparedby my father twenty years before to be a grouse and pheasant cover, andfetching a compass of half a mile or more across the maize fields, camein among the oaks and hickories of the manor grounds.
Still there was no sight nor sound of any enemy; no light of candles atthe house, or of camp-fires beneath the trees.
A little way within the grove, where the interlacing tree-tops made thedarkness like Egyptian night, Jennifer went on all fours to feel aroundas if in search of something on the sward. Whereat I called softly toknow what he would be at.
He rose, muttering, half as to himself: "I thought I'd never be so farout of reckoning." Then to me: "A few hours since, the Cherokees wereencamped just here. You are standing in the ashes of their fire."
"So?" said I. "Then they have gone?"
"Gone from this safely enough, to be sure. They have been gone somehours; the cinders are cold and dew wet."
"So much the better," I would say, thinking only that now there wouldbe the fewer enemies to fight.
He clipt my arm suddenly, putting the value of an oath into his grippingof it.
"Come awake, man; this is no time to be a-daze!" His whisper was a sharpbehest, with a shake of the gripped arm for emphasis. "If the Indiansare gone, it means that the powder train has come and gone, too."
"Well?" said I.
I was still thinking, with less than a clod's wit, that this would sendthe baronet captain about his master's business, and so Margery wouldhave surcease of him for a time, at least. But Jennifer fetched me awakewith another whip-lash word or two.
"Jack! has the night's work gone to your head? If Falconnet has got hismarching orders you may be sure he's tried by hook or crook to play'safe bind, safe find,' with Madge. By heaven! 'twas that she was afeardof, and we are here too late! Come on!"
With that he faced about and ran; and forgetting to loose his grip on myarm, took me with him till I broke away to have my sword hand free. Sorunning, we came presently to the open space before the house, and,truly, it was well for us that the place was clean deserted; for by thiswe had both forgot the very name of prudence.
Jennifer outran me to the door by half a length, and fell to hammeringfiercely on the panel with the pommel of his broadsword.
"Open! Mr. Stair; open!" he shouted, between the batterings; but it wasfive full minutes before the fan-light overhead began to show some faintglimmerings of a candle coming from the rooms beyond.
Richard rested at that, and in the pause a thin voice shrilled fromwithin.
"Be off, you runagates! Off, I say! or I fire upon ye through the door!"
Giving no heed to the threat, Dick set up his clamor again, calling outhis name, and bidding the old man open to a friend. In some notching ofthe hubbub I heard the unmistakable click of a gun-flint on steel. Therewas barely time to trip my reckless batterer and to fall flat with himon the door-stone when a gun went off within, and a handful of slugs,breaching the oaken panel at the height of a man's middle, wentscreeching over us.
Before I knew what he would be at, Richard was up with an oath, backingoff to hurl himself, shoulder on, against the door. It gave with asplintering crash, letting him in headlong. I followed less hastily. Itwas as black as a setter's mouth within, the gun fire having snuffed theold man's candle out. But we had flint and steel and tinder-box, andwhen the punk was alight, Jennifer found the candle under foot and gaveit me. It took fire with a fizzing like a rocket fuse, and was wellblackened with gunpowder. When the flint had failed to bring the firingspark, the old man had set his piece off with the candle flame.
We found him in the nook made by the turn of the stair, flung thither,as it seemed, by the recoil of the great bell-mouthed blunderbuss whichhe was still clutching. The fall had partly stunned him, but he wasalive enough to protest feebly that he would take a dozen oaths upon hisloyalty to the cause; that he had mistook us for some thieving maraudersof the other side; craftily leaving cause and party without a name tillhe should have his cue from us.
Whereupon Richard loosed his neckcloth to give him better breathingspace, and bidding me see if the revelers had left a heel-tap of wine inany bottle nearer than the wine cellar, lifted the old man and proppedhim in the corner of the high-backed hall settle.
The wine quest led me to the banqueting-room. Here disorder reignedsupreme. The table stood as the roisterers had left it; the very wreckand litter of a bacchanalian feast. Bottles, some with the necks struckoff, were scattered all about, and the floor was stained and sticky withspilt wine and well sanded with shattered glass.
I found a remnant draining in one of the broken bottles, and a cup topour it in; and with this salvage from the wreck returned to Jenniferand his charge. The old man had come to some better sensing ofthings,--he had been vastly more frightened than hurt, as Isuspected,--and to Richard's eager questionings was able to give somefeebly querulous replies.
"Yes, they're gone--all gone, curse 'em; and they've taken every plackand bawbee they could lay their thieving hands upon," he mumbled. "'Tislike the dogs; to stay on here and eat and drink me out of house andhome, and then to scurry off when I'm most like to need protection."
"But Madge?" says Richard. "Is she safe in bed?"
"She's a jade!" was all the answer he got. Then the old man sat up andpeered around the end of the settle to where I stood, cup and bottle inhand. "'Tis a Christian thought," he quavered. "Give me a sup of thewine, man."
I served him and had a Scottish blessing for my wastefulness, because,forsooth, the broken bottle spilt a thimbleful in the pouring. I saw hedid not recognize me, and was well enough content to let it rest thus.
Richard suffered him to drink in peace, but when the cup was empty herenewed his asking for Margery. At this the master of the house,heartened somewhat by my father's good madeira, made shift to get uponhis feet in some tremulous fashion.
"Madge, d'ye say? She's gone; gone where neither you nor that dour-faceddeevil that befooled us all will find her soon, I promise you, DickieJennifer!" he snapped; and I gave them my back and stumbled blindly tothe door, making sure his next word would tell my poor wronged lad allthat he should have learned from never any other lips but mine own. ButRichard himself parried the impending stroke of truth, saying:
"So she is safe and well, Mr. Stair, 'tis all I ask to know."
"She is safe enough; safer by far than you are at this minute, my youngcock-a-hoop rebel, now that the king--God save him!--has his own again."
I turned quickly on the broad door-stone to look within. Out of doorsthe early August dawn was grayin
g mistily overhead, but in the house thesputtering tallow dip still struggled feebly with the gloom. They stoodfacing each other, these two, my handsome lad, the pick and choice of acomely race, looking, for all his toils and vigils, fresh and fit; andthe old man in his woolen dressing-gown, his wig awry, and his lean faceyellow in the candle-light.
"How is that you say, Mr. Stair?" says Dick. "The king--but that is onlythe old Tory cry. There will never be a king again this side of thewater."
The old man reached out and hooked a lean finger in the lad'sbuttonhole. "Say you so, Richard Jennifer? Then you will never haveheard the glorious news?" This with a leer that might have been oftriumph or the mere whetting of gossip eagerness--I could not tell.
"No," says Richard, with much indifference.
"Hear it, then. 'Twas at Camden, four days since. They came together inthe murk of the Wednesday morning, my Lord Cornwallis and that poor foolGates. De Kalb is dead; your blethering Irishman, Rutherford, iscaptured; and your rag-tag rebel army is scattered to the four winds.And that's not all. On the Friday, Colonel Tarleton came up with Sumterat Fishing Creek and caught him napping. Whereupon, Charlie McDowell andthe over-mountain men, seeing all was lost, broke their camp on theBroad and took to their heels, every man jack of them for himself. So yesee, Dickie Jennifer, there's never a cursed corporal's guard left ineither Carolina to stand in the king's way."
He rattled all this off glibly, like a child repeating some lesson gotby heart; but when I would have found a grain of comfort in the hopethat it was a farrago of Falconnet's lies, Jennifer made the truthappear in answer to a curt question.
"'Tis beyond doubt?--all this, Mr. Stair?"
The old loyalist--loyalist now, if never certainly before--sat down onthe settle and laughed; a dry wizened cackle of a laugh that soundedlike the crumpling of new parchment.
"You'd best be off, light foot and tight foot, Master Richard, lest youlearn shrewdly for yourself. 'Tis in everybody's mouth by this. Therewere some five-and-forty of the king's friends come together here nolonger ago than yestere'en to drink his Majesty's health, and eh, man!but it will cost me a pretty penny! Will that satisfy ye?"
"Yes," said Jennifer, thinking, mayhap, as I did, that nothing short ofgospel-true news would have sufficed to unlock this poor old miser'swine cellar.
"Well, then; you'd best be off while you may; d'ye hear? I bear ye noill-will, Richard Jennifer; and if Mr. Tarleton lays hold of you, you'llhang higher than Haman for evading your parole, I promise you. We'll saynaught about this rape of the door-lock, though 'tis actionable, sir,and I'll warn you the law would make you smart finely for it. But we'llenter a _nolle prosequi_ on that till you're amnestied and back, thenyou can pay me the damage of the broken lock and we'll cry quits."
At this my straightforward Richard snorted in wrathful derision. Howevermuch he loved the daughter, 'twas clear he had small regard for thefather.
"Seeing we came to do you a service, Mr. Stair, I think we may set theblunderbuss and the handful of slugs over against the smashed door. Andthat fetches me back to our errand here. You say Madge is safe. Doesthat mean that you have spirited her away since last night?"
"Dinna fash yoursel' about Madge, Richard Jennifer. She's meat for yourbetters, sir!" rasped the old man, lapsing into the mother tongue, as hedid now and then in fear or anger.
"Still I would know what you mean when you say she is safe," saysRichard, whose determination to crack a nut was always proportioned tothe hardness of the shell.
Gilbert Stair cursed him roundly for an impertinent jackanapes, and thengave him his answer.
"'Tis none of your business, Dickie Jennifer, but you may know and behanged to you! She rode home with the Witherbys last night after therout, and will be by this safe away in t'other Carolina where yourcursed Whiggeries darena lift head or hand."
"Of her own free will?" Dick persisted.
"Damme! yes; bag, baggage, serving wench and all. Now will you be offabout your business before some spying rascal lays an informationagainst me for harboring you?"
Richard joined me on the door-stone. The dawn was in its twilight now,and the great trees on the lawn were taking gray and ghostly shapes inthe dim perspective.
"You heard what he had to say?" said he.
I nodded.
"It seems we have missed our cue on all sides," he went on, not withoutbitterness. "I would we might have had a chance to fire a shot or twobefore the ship went down."
"At Camden, you mean? That's but the beginning; the real battles are allto be fought yet, I should say."
He shook his head despondently. "You are a newcomer, Jack, and you knownot how near outworn the country is. Gilbert Stair has the right of itwhen he says there will be nothing to stop the redcoats now."
I called to mind the resolute little handful under Captain Abram Forney,one of many such, he had told me, and would not yield the point.
"There will be plenty of fighting yet, and we must go to bear a handwhere it is needed most," said I. "Where will that be, think you? AtCharlotte?"
He looked at me reproachfully.
"This time 'tis you who are the laggard in love, John Ireton. Will yougo and leave Mistress Margery wanting an answer to her poor little cryfor help?"
I shrugged. "What would you? Has she not taken her affair into her ownhands?"
"God knows how much or little she has had to say about it," said he."But I mean to know, too, before I put my name on any company roll." Wewere among the trees by this, moving off for safety's sake, since theday was coming; and he broke off short to wheel and face me as one whowould throttle a growling cur before it has a chance to bite. "We knowthe worst of each other now, Jack, and we must stand to our compact. Letus see her safe beyond peradventure of a doubt; then I'm with you tofight the redcoats single-handed, if you like. I know what you willsay--that the country calls us now more than ever; but there must needsbe some little rallying interval after all this disaster, and--"
"Have done, Richard," said I. "Set the pace and mayhap I can keep stepwith you. What do you propose?"
"This; that we go to Witherby Hall and get speech with Mistress Madge,if so be--"
"Stay a moment; who are these Witherbys?"
"A dyed-in-the-wool Tory family seated some ten miles across the line inYork district. True, 'tis a rank Tory hotbed over there, and we shallrun some risk."
"Never name risk to me if you love me, Richard Jennifer!" I broke in."What is your plan?"
His answer was prompt and to the point. "To press on afoot through theforest till we come to the York settlement; then to borrow a pair ofTory horses and ride like gentlemen. Are you game for it?"
I hesitated. "I see no great risk in all this, and whatever the hazard,'tis less for one than for two. You'd best go alone, Richard."
He saw my meaning; that I would stand aside and let him be her succor ifshe needed help. But he would not have it so.
"No," he said, doggedly. "We'll go together, and she shall choosebetween us for a champion, if she is in the humor to honor either of us.That is what 'twill come to in the end; and I warn you fairly, JohnIreton, I shall neither give nor take advantage in this strife. I saidlast night that I would stand aside, but that I can not--not till sheherself says the killing word with her own lips."
"And that word will be--?"
"That she loves another man. Come; let us be at it; we should be wellout of this before the plantation people are astir."
The Master of Appleby Page 20